Day 135: Back to our favorite key, Long Key.

Our 5 nights at Bahia Honda have come to an end. I want to say that I am sad to leave but the truth is, we are kind of looking forward to leaving. Yes the view is spectacular and we have heard from so many people who said that this is the best state park for camping in the keys and we are in one of their few waterfront sites. The fact that we have had to run the AC non-stop for 5 straight days has really been a bummer.

We have been continually keeping an eye on the reservation status of all of our campsites while we are in the keys daily. We are staying at all of the state parks excluding John Pennekamp in Key Largo. We have had pretty good luck finding last minute sites and better yet, we have had the opportunity to make existing ones better when waterfront sites show up.

We got 5 nights ahead of us at Long Key. The nice thing about Long Key is that they are all waterfront. The bad thing about our reservations is that our 5 nights are in 3 different sites. That means we will be staying no longer than 2 nights in each site.

We took the opportunity as we passed through Marathon to get reacquainted with civilization a bit by stopping for lunch at the McDonald’s. I have heard that the McRib is back again and I just had to get my hands on a processed mystery pork product drenched in BBQ sauce.

As we got to Long Key, we were crossing our fingers and hoping that the heat and mosquito issues were isolated to Bahia Honda. It would be pretty miserable if we had to resort to spending the next 5 days locked yet again in the Airstream.

The beauty of Florida State Parks is that they always set aside a few walk-up sites for people who do not have reservations. I was hoping that they would have one available for us when we got here. That means not only will we not have to move twice in 5 days to a new site, we will also have the option to stay a full 14 days if we wanted to.

Luckily for us, they had a walk-up site available. We are now 2-for-2 at Long Key for getting a walk-up site. We scored one last time too but did not have the luxury of staying longer due to having reservations elsewhere. This time, we are going to make this stay last for as long as we can. In fact, to stay here for 14 days, we will end up cancelling part of our waterfront reservations we got at Curry Hammock State Park and have Christmas here at Long Key instead.

I dropped off Marlene and the kids as I dumped the waste tanks at the dump station. The girls have been wadding up massive amounts of toilet paper and it needed a thorough rinsing. I finally pulled up to our site and found that it is just 4 sites down from the site we stayed at last time.

As we got to our site, I can instantly tell that this is much better than the situation at Bahia Honda. Because we are on the Atlantic side, we are getting a nice continuous breeze from the open water. The breeze not only cools us down, it also makes it harder for small bugs to linger. Also because the sites are on sand instead of coral, water doesn’t accumulate and rather just passes right through into the ground. That gives mosquitoes very few places to breed which in turn makes them at lot less populous.

Since we are going to stay here for 2 weeks, we even busted out our tent for the first time on this trip. It will make a nice place for the kids to keep their toys and have a place to play that is outside of the Mish.

Every site at Long Key is pretty much the same. There is a little bit of beach but other than that, water is right at your door step. The tide comes in and out but the water is only about knee high going out as far as 100 yards.

4 sites down is where we spent 3 nights in 2010. This time around it is the camp host’s site.

We are already loving it here. It is great for us to have the luxury of being here for so long but it is probably going to suck for our readers since we don’t plan on doing much for the next couple of weeks.

Any birders out there? I just might start blogging about birds if I get bored enough.

The campground here is full but since it isn’t setup as a loop, you only notice the people that are to either side of you. I can get use to sunsets like this for a couple of weeks.

Time to start a fire and enjoy a refreshing beverage.

Can you tell that Ava is finally excited about being by the water without bugs?

I even got Luka to listen to me play a little music on Ava’s pink guitar. Life is good.